


Still the Window Burns

by Tabithian



Series: Foundations [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 18:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4273743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think there's a dead body on the roof.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still the Window Burns

**Author's Note:**

> More of the [AU of ridiculousness](http://tabithian.tumblr.com/tagged/Foundations) inspired by [this](http://tabithian.tumblr.com/post/123252512884/theappleppielifestyle-i-got-in-my-car-and-you). 
> 
>  
> 
> *hands*

“I think there's a dead body on the roof.”

Well, it _is_ Gotham.

“Tim? Did you hear what I said?”

Cullen, voice high and nervous, staring at Tim with wide eyes and Tim.

Tim sighs, saves his work and shuts his laptop down. “Did Harper do it?”

Harper's gotten into it with Annie before, arguing about the building's wiring and other things Tim prefers not to know about to maintain plausible deniability. It's not outside the realm of possibility they've finally followed through on their threats.

It shouldn't be possible, but Cullen's eyes go even wider, shock and indignation. “What? No!”

Tim pretends he doesn't hear Cullen's muttered, _She wouldn't have just leave the body where anyone could find it, anyway,_ because.

“All right, show me.”

*******

All things considered, it's easy to see why Cullen would think it was a dead body up on the apartment building's roof, what with the blood.

“Er. Should you be doing that?”

Tim looks over his shoulder at Cullen, who wonder of wonders did _not_ listen to Tim and is following along right behind him.

“Cullen.”

“Harper told me not to let you get yourself murdered while she's out of town,” Cullen says, defensive. 

Tim looks at Cullen.

Cullen looks back.

The supposed dead body groans, hand clamped tight around the fire extinguisher spasming open, dropping it.

“Oh,” Cullen says, grabbing the back of Tim's shirt. “Not dead?”

Tim very carefully doesn't sigh as he pries Cullen's hand off and pushes him back. “Not dead,” he agrees, which introduces a whole slew of new problems.

Generally speaking, blood covered people are not a good thing in Gotham. (Actually, that's probably true elsewhere as well, but. For now Tim's focusing on Gotham.)

Blood covered people who look like they've been through a small war are even worse, although Tim isn't quite sure what to make of the fire extinguisher. 

“You should be backing up, Cullen,” Tim says, and takes a step closer to the man as he slowly sits up. “Now, please.”

Cullen, of course, does not.

This time Tim does sigh, because.

“The fuck?”

Tim looks back to see the man looking at them, hand raised to his head.

“Where the hell am I?”

Tim ignores Cullen plucking at his sleeve, trying to get him to move away from the bloody stranger, and moves another step closer. Out of arm's reach, but only just.

There's. Something is niggling at the back of Tim's mind, something _familiar_.

“Why the fire extinguisher?” Tim asks, because yes, that's the important thing here.

Cullen makes a little noise, confused. The man blinks, gaze following Tim's to the abandoned object in question.

“The fuck?”

*******

“Okay, look,” Cullen whispers, just this side of frantic. “I get that you're some kind of do-gooder - “

Tim gives him a look for that, but Cullen keeps trucking.

“But seriously, Tim, he's probably some crazy murderer or something!”

Tim.

“I can hear you, asshole.”

“Oh, well, sorry I just leapt to conclusions when _you're covered in blood!_ ” Cullen shoots back. 

And Tim.

Tim sighs, resists the urge to pinches the bridge of his nose because that would be a bad idea at the moment.

“Cullen.”

Cullen doesn't pout, never that, but it's very, very close.

“He's hurt,” Tim says, reasonable. 

The blood seems to have come from a cut on the man's arm, something going through the sleeve of his jacket and shirt underneath to leave quite a mess. Tim's managed to get it cleaned up a little, picked foreign materials out of the wound, their mystery guest watching him work like a hawk the whole time.

“That's what hospitals are for!”

Tim looks up as the man tenses, hand resting on his leg curling into a fist.

Admittedly, this is something better left to qualified medical professionals, but Tim doesn't think their mystery guest is planning on doing that anytime soon.

“I'm going to need more gauze, Cullen,” Tim says, meeting said mystery guest's eyes. “You know where I keep them.”

Because Cullen and Harper spend as much time in Tim's apartment than their own some days, and Tim still doesn't know how that happened.

Tim can feel Cullen staring at him.

There are several rolls of gauze lined up with other medical supplies from Tim's first-aide kit on Tim's kitchen table.

After a long moment Cullen gives up, heaving a disgusted sigh as he tromps off to get the gauze doesn't need, muttering to himself darkly.

“He seems a little high-strung.” 

This close, that strange feeling of _familiar_ has shifted into something approaching recognition, although it's not quite there yet.

“I hadn't noticed,” Tim says.

*******

“How are you not dead yet?” Cullen wonders, when their mystery guest vanishes on them sometime during the night.

Tim looks at Cullen. Chooses to address a more important matter.

“Why are you wearing my clothes?” 

Cullen scowls, wrapping his arms around himself to better hide the Blue Beetle emblem on the front of the t-shirt.

“I didn't want to go back to my apartment for clothes in case you got murdered while I was gone, okay?”

Tim.

“Okay, Cullen,” Tim says, because Cullen's been through a very stressful series of events.

Cullen _looks_ at him. 

“Thank you,” Tim says, and means it.

“Oh, uh.” Cullen seems at a loss for a moment before he remembers why he'd just been through a very stressful series of events. “Don't do it again.”

Tim carefully doesn't laugh. 

*******

“Oh my God, what are _you_ doing here?”

Tim looks up from the newest agreement he's put together at Cullen who has proven he has no understanding of how knocking works, or that he really shouldn't have a key to Tim's apartment.

“Nice,” Jason says. “We're going to be neighbors now, you know.”

Jason's looking much better that he was a few weeks ago, bleeding in Tim's kitchen while Cullen played doomsayer over Tim's shoulder.

“What.”

Jason smirks. Looks at Tim. Back to Cullen.

“I needed a new place,” he says. “My apartment building burned down.”

Purposefully leaves it vague, letting Cullen come to his own conclusions given what he knows of Jason to this point.

A beat of silence, and then - 

“Oh my God, are you an _arsonist_?” 

Jason's smirk widens, and Tim.

Jason hadn't exactly been very forthcoming with Tim either, but. That feeling of recognition is a quietly smug presence in the back of his mind _because_.

“We're all going to die,” Cullen says, not-pouting at Tim. “All of us, Tim.”

“I can still hear you, asshole.”

Tim goes ahead and gives in to the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose this time.

*******

At least now Tim knows why Jason had the fire extinguisher.


End file.
